In Defense Of Miley

"I am going to make mistakes and I am not perfect. I never intended for any of this to happen and I am truly sorry if I have disappointed anyone" -Miley Cyrus, April 2008

In case you haven't heard....okay let's be honest, you've heard. You've probably seen. We bet you've been trying to UN-see. Miley Cyrus finally allowed the wheels that turn the Pop Music machine to crush her, her once fun teen-idol image finally thrashed beyond repair at this year's Video Music Awards. Hers is a tragic tale, her downward spiral towards obscurity a product of the multi-million dollar music money-making machine, and like so many before her and so many yet to come, she is completely in over her head.

Remember Her First Single?

In short, Miley's Disney show got huge at an extremely accelerated rate, and Disney looked to capitalize: Miley Cyrus released her first single "Party In The USA" to make money off all the parents who knew buying Hannah Montana crap would silence their yapping preteen daughters for a day or two. And you know what? Call us crazy, but it's actually not a terrible song.

Still with us? Wow...thanks everyone, you're more loyal than we anticipated.

True, "Party In The USA" is a bubblegum-pop-candy-fluff song when you listen to it on the radio, but have you ever taken a look through the lyrics with a raspy angst-filled Adele voice in mind? After all, the apparent meaning of a song can be changed radically depending on what style you play it in. Imagine if a soulful up-and-coming country artist from Nashville penned the following lyrics about her very sudden rise to fame and her difficulty coping with the new expectations of her career in the form of a ballad:

Get to the club in my taxi cab

Everybody's lookin' at me now

Like "Who's that chick that's rockin' kicks

She's gotta be from out of town"

So hard with my girls not around me

It's definitely not a Nashville party

'Cause all I see are stilettos

...I guess I never got the memo

Feel like hoppin' on a flight,

Back to my hometown tonight,

Something stops me every time,

The DJ plays my song, and I feel alright

This is a song about pressure, being an outcast, and being split between wanting to fit into a new world whilst longing to return to the one you know. The only way to cope with the drastic change in lifestyle is to get lost in music. What's wrong about that?

The song would hold a lot more weight with older audiences if it wasn't so dressed up in sparkles and teenage dreams. If you still hate the song because you can't get the pop-y melody out of your head, behold the (slightly more enjoyable than you want to admit) punk version of "Party In The USA":

The band is "Life On Repeat", show them some love on Facebook

So we've established the tone and meaning of a song can be altered with some clever musicianship, why are we talking about this? Because Miley's first single foreshadowed everything in her direct future- the pressure to fit in to mainstream pop music is what turned the Nashville teen icon into a total lunatic in a matter of a few years.

Because Like Any Business, Record Companies Want To Maximize Profit

Of course if Miley Cyrus burst onto the scene with her weird plastic VMA two-piece directly after establishing a young teen fanbase with the success of Hannah Montana, her career would've flopped right out of the gate. Her first album went triple-platinum and was essentially just the soundtrack to her show. Since then, each album has pushed her persona more in direction of the other top-grossing pop artists in the industry. She tries her hand at songwriting from time to time, but all the edgy party-girl crap is written for her by the powers that be. Unfortunately for her, instead of painting Miley as a fun teen princess with the same straight-laced image of other Nashville country stars,

Miley Cyrus was being molded with each progressing album to resemble a much different type of "musician"...

Oy.

If you're a big record label person, you know Lady Gaga up there is selling out arenas and making you ridiculous amounts of money. You want more money. You created Nicki Minaj, the black Lady Gaga. Your Miley Cyrus fans were growing older and edgier, and Miley needed to keep up. As those fans grew up, you caused Miley Cyrus to evolve from her teen icon image to someone the VMAs could rely on to carry on their proud tradition of shocking (and therefore highly publicized) performances.

A record label uses you until your popularity has peaked, and then finds someone else better, younger, and more trendy to pick up where you left off. Some musicians survive it and spend a few more years enjoying mildly successful careers, most don't. Labels aren't in the business of taking care of their artists; they make it their business to make sure their musicians are as profitable as possible until their fifteen minutes are up. And in about the fourteenth minute, they get the most use out of you by drumming up controversy around you and ultimately extinguishing your career with one more flurry of attention.

The bottom one is Ashlee Simpson; how quickly we all forget.

This Isn't Some Conspiracy Theory About Record Labels- It's A Fact

In fact, there's an entire song about it. Billy Squier's "The Stroke" isn't about sex; it's about the point in every musician's career when after years of hard work and dedication and profitability, the producers and label executives and all the other rich people who've invested in you and claimed to be your friend have finally used you to the furthest extent they could, and now they're dropping you face first into the ocean to fend for yourself. 

Put your right hand out, give a firm handshake

talk to me about that one big break

Spread your ear pollution, both far and wide

keep your contributions by your side...

Put your left foot out, keep it all in place

work your way right into my face

First you tried to bet me, you make my backbone slide

When you find you've bled me, slip on by...

Miley Cyrus' popularity peaked too fast too early, record labels are trying to milk her popularity for all it's worth before she's finally washed up. At this point we'd like to remind everyone that Cyrus was just 14 when fame was dropped into her lap, and she dealt with it about as well as any teenager could. She lasted a whole seven years before she was sadly transformed into the puppet we all saw on the VMA video on Youtube. 

The girl is 20 years old and has already gone through a rise to fame and fall from grace, and is about to release her "edgiest" album yet- thus the attention-grabbing VMA show. Her own star power isn't enough to promote an album anymore, she needs publicity stunts, no matter how horrific. "So what?" you say, "She seemed pretty okay with acting like an idiot in front of everyone, why should we feel bad for her? That was her choice."

It Was Almost Definitely Not Her Choice

Does this look like a natural change to you?

Hey, I think that girl went to my high school.

Holy crap, Pink has a sister?

Hollywood dressing up its stars in ridiculous apparel and makeup and ignoring the actual personality of an individual in favor of a fake one in order to get maximum attention, that sounds kind of like

This.

**Editor's Note: This article was almost called "4 ways the music industry is basically The Hunger Games".

There are entire decades' worth of music dedicated to the fact that record labels and music industry titans are in it for the money, not the music. Several genres are even based on this basic truth and the overall theme of rebellion, but it sneaks into every musician's songwriting. Here's Sara Bareilles being less-than-subtle:

I learned the hard way that they all say

Things you wanna hear

My heavy heart sinks deep down under

You and your twisted words

Your help just hurts

You are not what I thought you were

Hello to high and dry

That's from her hit "Love Song", which isn't directed at some guy, but in fact actually written about the studio guys who told her she needed to pen a hit love song for their record that they could play on the radio. She wrote "Love Song" out of spite and the label guys were basically like "Yeah this will work great, thanks". Sara Bareilles' most popular song contains in its lyrics a description similar to Billy Squier's regarding the lip-service you get when you first arrive on the music scene, and the feeling of desertion when the scene moves on without you. Here's Pink being blatant:

L.A. told me, "You'll be a pop star

all you have to change is everything you are"

Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears

She's so pretty, that just ain't me

By the way, L.A. refers to the person, not the place.

In conclusion, Miley Cyrus is just another puppet being used to fuel the ever-burning fire of crappy pop-music money-making. She made a fool of herself, they all eventually do. Her fame is diminishing and sooner rather than later her circle of industry people keeping her afloat will abandon her to deal with her shattered image by herself, even though it was that same circle who did the shattering. Miley doesn't write most of her songs, she doesn't choreograph the VMAs, and she has little control over the direction of her career. 

The music business is one of contracts and obligations and extortion, and despite her rapid deterioration into another teen idol-gone-bad, she has our sympathy for being put in an impossible position at an age when most girls are finally getting their braces off. Miley may appear crazy on the surface, but deep down there is a sad girl scarred by the music business who doesn't know of any way out other than to do what she's told, even when she's told to do Robin Thicke.

Who by the way has a wife and kids.

-L

3 Reasons Ben Affleck Will Be A Decent Batman

Holy crap, calm down internet, everything's going to be just fine. The Batman/Superman crossover slated to come out in a few years has already generated levels of public outcry only previously encountered during last year's Twinkie rage. In case you haven't heard, Ben Affleck has been cast as the next Batman, and will appear in Man of Steel 2. Apparently some people aren't too happy about it. Before you do anything stupid like say you won't go see this movie, here are some things to keep in mind.

Stop pretending you aren't going to see this movie, 

guy-who-swore-he'd-move-to-Canada-after-last-year's-election.

#1 It Was Never, Ever Going to Be Christian Bale.

As much as we all enjoy Christopher Nolan's dark Batman universe, there will be no more Batbale. Nolan always intended for it to be a trilogy, and his Batman is independent of any crossover universes DC intends to produce. Lots of fans were disappointed that Bale wasn't offered a truck of money to reprise the role, but those same fans must have missed every important element of Bale's aging character in "Dark Knight Rises"- the whole point of that movie was to express that Bale's batman had reached an end, questioning whether the city needed Batman and whether Bale himself needed Batman anymore. The end of the movie is cathartic, with Bale living a normal life abroad and someone else carrying on his work.

That's why this scene happened.

Affleck's Batman will be an entirely separate entity, and it's for the best. Trying to tie it in with Nolan's universe won't work, and it would only allow comparisons to be drawn- the people who want to make money know this. That's why Man of Steel's Batman won't necessarily be better or worse than Bale's, just "different". And, worse case scenario...

#2 At Worst, He Will Still Be The Second Best Batman.

Before you freak out about the merits of "Batman Forever", consider what this movie will be. "Man of Steel" finally got Superman right, and the sequel should be equally terrific. Henry Cavill is a quality leading man, and adding Ben Affleck to the mix in a slightly more mature and possibly borderline mentor-ish role would be totally awesome. They didn't cast a young unknown actor because they don't want Batman to be young or inexperienced. They don't need to rehash Batman's origins, Warner Bros knows everyone already saw Batman Begins. Not only can Affleck pull off being the intelligent, calculating, butt-kicking Batman, he can also be a believable Bruce Wayne, which is tough to do. Don't believe it? Then apparently you skipped out on seeing "Argo".

#3 The Dude Is An Oscar-Winning Actor.

"The Town" was a good movie; "Argo" was something else. Seriously, go see it. The guy knows what he's doing, you can't hold "Daredevil" against him anymore. Daredevil came out ten years ago, back when Halle Berry won an Academy Award for Best Actress- things have changed in ten years. That was before Hollywood even figured out superhero movies, spewing out a really awful Hulk movie, two really awful Fantastic 4 movies, and a semi-sequel to Daredevil that nobody saw.

Also, ten years ago Jennifer Garner was still in movies. It was a different time.

The "Daredevil sucks" argument against Affleck is pretty baseless, because honestly it wasn't the acting that was bad, it was a combination of a bad screenplay and the plot in general. Affleck is a pretty self-aware guy, he knows he's taking on a role people love, he's aware of how brutal comic-book nerds can be, and best of all, he's not afraid to laugh at himself.



Give the guy some credit, he's going to do fine as Batman and the crossover movie will be awesome. We're still not sold on how successful DC's "Justice League" plans will be, but this is a big step in the right direction. And even if you disagree and think Affleck is a stupid casting choice, you're still going to see the movie anyway so pipe down and stop being negative- Batman and Superman are going to be in the same movie; this is cause to be excited.


**UPDATE: For even more credible reasons Ben Affleck can pull off Batman, head over to ScreenRant and read this article.

**ANOTHER UPDATE: Here are the negative reactions to Christopher Nolan casting Heath Ledger as the Joker a few years ago.


-L

4 Forgotten Disney Movies (That Are Totally Awesome)

Everyone's got a basic idea of what constitutes a Disney classic. Aladdin, The Lion King, The Beauty and The Beast, and that stupid one with the mermaid all sit comfortably on the figurative shelf of childhood nostalgia. But then there are the Disney movies that time forgot, and we don't mean the ones that came out in the 1940's that only pretentious snobs and animation students have the patience to watch and discuss.

If "Make Mine Music" is your favorite Disney movie, you are a hipster, and there's little hope for you.

There are Disney films released in the past two decades that you probably forgot about even though you totally saw them. Somehow the marketing people at Disney have grown powerful in their ability to absolutely bury films they don't really want attached to their brand, favoring the way overdone "pretty princess" paint-by-numbers storytelling style and, in turn, abandoning some of their most original movies to be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Seriously though, how great was this movie?

These are the forgotten films of Disney, each worthy of the praise so often heaped upon the other less imaginative and less deserving films in the Disney Canon.

#4 The Great Mouse Detective

The Great Mouse Detective has more action packed into its plot than perhaps any other movie in the Disney library. There really isn't a dull moment throughout the entire movie, and considering "The Rescuers" was somehow deemed a success despite being painfully slow-paced, you'd think Disney would be all about promoting another movie starring heroic anthropomorphized mice. Most Disney movies can't hope to match scenes as awesome as the toy store escape scene, and in The Great Mouse Detective, that's like only the third-best scene (behind the mousetrap escape scene and the final confrontation inside the Big Ben).

This was also the first movie in what would become a longstanding Disney tradition to feature the villain so heavily, which might not sound like a big deal, but imagine the impact of having anyone but James Woods voice Hades years later; Hercules very well could have bombed, and that would've been tragic. Also, some guy named Jeremy Irons voiced Scar in Lion King, and without any precedent for major actors landing villainous roles in Disney films, that may not have come to pass.

By the way, you know how earlier we mentioned a few of the 90's classics you know and love? Well, without this movie Disney Animation Studios was looking at no longer being a profitable branch of the Disney moneymaking machine. Fortunately, it did well enough that "The Little Mermaid" got the go-ahead and made big bags of money, and the animation studio survived to create some of the most memorable animated movies in existence, and arguably one of the greatest films of all time.

#3 Aladdin and the King of Thieves

Technically, Disney chooses to just ignore all their awful direct-to-video sequels and pretend like they aren't part of their company's catalogue, so even though they have produced at least one terrible low-budget sequel for every one of your favorite Disney classics in order to make some extra cash at the expense of appearing a tad greedy and having no standards whatsoever, as a brand they continue to pretend like they only make original high-quality family-friendly memories.

Disney gets away with their misguided money-grubbing projects 
by bashfully stating "Uh yeah, that totally wasn't us..."

What Aladdin and The King of Thieves accomplished was nothing short of miraculous; not only was it a direct-to-video sequel, but it's not even the first sequel tacked onto the original's success in cruddy sequel form. Aladdin Two: the one nobody saw was your standard crap Disney ripoff of the original, lacking every single element that made the first so good (including Robin Williams). However, in this surprisingly impressive third installment they got Robin Williams to reprise the Genie, wrote original music for it, and whipped up a plot that's actually pretty awesome-

A prominent royal couple is about to be married, but before the wedding can be completed the legendary forty thieves unleash a stampede on the festivities and use the distraction to loot the palace's treasury room in search of a powerful staff which unlocks an omnipotent oracle- So far, so good.

The oracle reveals that trapped within the ranks of the forty thieves is the hero's father. Shocked to hear his father is alive at all, our protagonist tracks the thieves to their secret mountain hideout only to discover his father is the leader of the marauders, and the only way he can escape the hideout alive is to join the ranks of the forty thieves by defeating this guy in single combat:

It's revealed that the thieves are searching for an ultimate treasure hidden on a legendary vanishing isle, a city that sinks into the sea and never surfaces in the same place twice. We won't go into any more detail because seriously if you haven't seen this movie you need to go take care of that. But turn that plot into a live-action film and you've got a pretty successful summer blockbuster on your hands. The music throughout is solid, the animation on par with the original Aladdin film, and one could argue it's actually better than the original since there are less scenes about Jasmine and more fights to the death and Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunting.

#2 The Black Cauldron

You knew this was coming.

The Black Cauldron was supposed to be an epic animated adventure based on "The Chronicles of Prydain" by Lloyd Alexander, and maintained a darker tone than past Disney movies. It was made in the 80's when Disney was still trying to be creative instead of just pushing princess crap on all us 90's kids. When a brand new snot-nosed studio chairman named Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that it be edited beyond recognition because he didn't like it, literally everyone was like "Um no, it's almost all done, buddy" and Katzenberg personally started chopping it to bits before Disney's CEO finally made him stop. The damage was done, and the ticked-off animators later said the finished product lacked "the humor, pathos, and the fantasy which had been so strong in Lloyd Alexander's work. The story had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it was heartbreaking to see such wonderful material wasted."

However, due to Disney's unwillingness to acknowledge the film's existence and the fact that the movie is still extremely cool, it has become the underground cult classic Disney film for all the kids who wanted to be different and needed an opinion that stood out from the crowd. 

Lloyd Alexander himself had this to say regarding the adaptation of his work:

First, I have to say, there is no resemblance between the movie and the book. Having said that, the movie in itself, purely as a movie, I found to be very enjoyable. I had fun watching it. What I would hope is that anyone who sees the movie would certainly enjoy it, but I'd also hope that they'd actually read the book. The book is quite different. It's a very powerful, very moving story, and I think people would find a lot more depth in the book.

So despite its failure to capture the depth of the story it's based on, the movie is still worth watching. Much like The Great Mouse Detective's overlooked contributions to what would eventually become Disney's formula for success, The Black Cauldron was the film that established the importance of a terrific film score, the significance of choosing a project with fascinating source material, and--most importantly--was the first Disney film to use that totally awesome slow-approaching undead army clip.

Relevant

#1 Atlantis: The Lost Empire

By all accounts, this movie was a success. Released in 2001 with excellent usage of CG animation at a time when that was starting to be all the rage (Emperor's new groove was released six months prior, Lilo and Stitch would be released the following year), Atlantis was supposed to have its own spin-off TV show and an underwater attraction at Disneyland until that all got cancelled because critics were accusing it of having an "unclear audience" and its "absence of songs". So, this action-adventure movie which uniquely separated itself from the entire decade of films that preceded it and featured a fantastically brilliant comic-bookish visual style and intense storytelling was buried because it didn't match the rest of Disney's childish sing-along crap.

"EVERY MOVIE MUST BE THIS." -Di$ney

Atlantis is an awesome science-fiction movie with everything you'd want in a adventure film, and what's more- you can still enjoy it today because it's watchable for audiences over the age of 9, unlike some other movies we could think of.

We really can't sum up just how great this movie is, and how unfairly it's been treated ever since Disney decided to stick with awful childish movies like Lilo and Stitch. To really get a feel for what this movie's about, here's the totally rad trailer:

More awesome in the first 15 seconds of this trailer than all 74 minutes of "Oliver and Company"

This movie has an award-winning soundtrack, the voice talents of Michael J. Fox, James Garner, and Leonard Nimoy, and several epic action sequences that simply leave no time for a special musical number. It's unfortunate that Disney disregards this movie as a winner simply because critics didn't like that it wasn't geared towards little girls, since that's actually the best part about it. It even has all the staples of a Disney product; establish the main character as a sympathetic figure with something to prove in the first five minutes? check. Milo chases down some fatcats with his theory regarding the submerged civilization and is utterly shut down. Side characters that steal the show? Also check.

There really isn't anything wrong with this movie. It's fun. It's got good characters, good action scenes, an ancient mechanical leviathan, and this girl is the movie's princess:

Seriously just go watch it, and support the great Disney movies that get swept under the rug. 

-L

Just A Small Thought Regarding Superheroes

As we've mentioned fairly frequently, a story is only ever as good as its characters. The human race has always sort of had a thing for iconic figures; Beowulf, Achilles, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Steven Tyler, the list of timeless heroes is a long one. Truly epic heroes capture immortality by awakening something in every human imagination that preserves their legendary status throughout the ages. In many ways, we need these characters in order to tell stories that could otherwise never be, and we need them for entertainment and enjoyment as well as to open our minds to many things we never considered before, like complex moral dilemmas, and Iron Man actually being a legitimate film franchise.

Stop lying to yourselves, we are all bandwagon fans on this one.

However, the most awesome qualities found in each of our heroes, especially in today's superhero-centric world, tend to also be what makes them really terrible people. While their on-screen butt-kicking is cool and all, today's heroes are no longer the shining standards of truth and right beloved by past generations. Now you've got kids running out of the theater pretending to be li'l Wolverines, and that may not be a positive thing.

You might have noticed there are only like two superheroes who are just all-around nice guys; Superman and Captain America. And that's assuming you have a pretty loose definition of "superhero".

From left to right: Indestructible Monster, God of Thunder, Underrated Badass, Is A Nice Guy, Samuel L. Jackson, Ultrasexy Superspy, Indestructible Flying Murderweapon.

**Editor's Note: How many band names were just mentioned in that subtext?**

The simplicity of "traditional" superheroes like the Captain or Superman creates too many problems. First, they're either unbeatable at full strength or totally wussy without their powers, both scenarios lacking in any sort of dramatic tension whatsoever. Second, they're ethically infallible and therefore unrelatable, since they tend to appear "truer than true". And third, you sorta get the feeling that Aunt Robin would beat Captain in a fist fight.

When people can't relate they lose interest. This is probably why in many cases, the antagonist winds up being the most awesome part of a story- villains have flaws, motivations which are often complex, and tend to have more interesting origins. We actually relate more with the enemy in most stories than with the hero, which is why we all find characters classified as "antiheroes" to be the best of both worlds. "Anti" in this case means a reflection of, so an antihero is someone with traits associated only with heroes but also the flawed attributes of a more real (and therefore relatable) individual. This is the genius of the Game of Thrones universe; many of the characters are not purely good or purely evil, but a complex mix of both. This isn't exactly an original idea; writers have been doing this for a really long time.

This is all a round-about way of saying that nowadays, heroes don't have to save the city or the girl or really even the world anymore, they just have to beat people up in impressive fashion. That's all we want out of our action heroes, and that's all we're being given. It's still pretty awesome, Wolverine has now been in like five movies, at least three of which were good, and his entire persona is based around the antihero concept. But it's a little concerning that we all kind of ignored that the whole planet was being annihilated in Pacific Rim because PLASMA CANNONS.

All we took away from this movie is that we now have the technology to make live-action Iron Giant.

Making the action-oriented characters we idolize essentially bad guys who lay the beatdown on others in the coolest way possible--therefore qualifying them as good guys--is one of the clearest examples of romanticizing criminality in today's society, a disturbing and damaging trend. We'd go into that concept more if this was a research-oriented website, but it's totally not, so enjoy this movie clip depicting this very thing we were just denouncing. Because even though today's good guys aren't really even good guys anymore, they are still super awesome.

-L